Stillwater Artisanal Brewing

They are a Baltimore based brewer with distribution in MD, NY, MA, VT, CT and likely several more states. One of the prevalent styles from them seems to be farmhouse ales. I`m sure others can expand on this. Great beer btw !

 

I've seen some of his stuff in Florida. Everything I've seen has been some kind of farmhouse ale.

 

Quick question, what is a gypsy brewery? Is it the same as saying something is owned Indians (not intended to be insulting).

 

i can tell you that his beer is usually great, and i particularly liked his collaboration with urbain from struise. it's a real style defying beer... mostly like a good belgian strong dark ale / quadrupel, but with weird saison elements that sound like they should clash but don't.

the regular line-up beers like cellar door are also really good.

re: distribution, they're easy to find in the places they're distributed to, so very easy to trade for i'm sure.

----

edit: to post above me, a "gypsy brewer" doesn't own a brewery. he goes to other people's breweries and rents time using their equipment (but he doesn't contract them to brew the beer for him from a recipe, like a "contract brewer"). i have no opinion on it at all, though i like stillwater and mikkeller, so i'm definitely not against it.

p.s. don't know what "owning something Indians" means, by the way.

 

Ah, I thought maybe it was owned by SE Europeans or something.

 

I've had a few of the Stillwaters off and on. They're quite good, but IMO they're too expensive for what they are.
Gypsy brewers aren't uncommon. As others said, they are simply brewers who rent space from other, established ones. Pretty Things in Massachusetts are gypsy's, Mikeller in Europe are also.

 

CA gets what seems like a majority of them.

 

PDX gets them as well. Great artwork too!

 

I highly recommend this one.

 

Readily available in Ohio. Most of the ones I've had are good. Had one on tap that tasted like ladybugs once, but I'm blaming the bar not the beer.

 

I see a few here in AZ. They're not cheap and the lack of description on the bottle to differentiate one from another makes it a bit tough to commit to picking one up. They all seem to just say farmhouse. Even reading through a handful of BA reviews didn't really help. I had a Stateside once and liked it...but don't really know how the others compare

 

Good point, I've never bought one of their beers, this is likely the reason. I see 5 Saisons sitting next to each other and have no idea of the intended differences.

 

Have had it and agree. Stillwater did a bunch of stuff with Evil Twin that was great, a few saison/IPA blends and other niceties. Check out Evil Twin from Denmark as well, Fruedian Slip is a nice BW.

 

Stillwater is brewed by Brian Strumke at DOG brewing company in Westminster, MD. He is also opening up a restaurant named after one of his ales, "Of Love and Regret," in Baltimore. It is supposed to have a dozen or more taps dedicated to his beers. Most of the beers are Saisons that have interesting ingredient combinations. My favorites are Jaded (Dark Wheat Ale) which was brewed at De Struise and Rule of Thirds (Hoppy Tripel) brewed with Canarus. Also, Outblack and any of the wine barrel aged beers are really solid.

 

What the hell does a Ladybug taste like?

 

This dude is the best thing coming out of MD.
If you can't differentiate between each "farmhouse" bottle and dont want to look it up, no worries!
They are all good, just pick one.
I currently have Cellar Door (excellent), Folklore, and As Follows.

edit: and btw, there typically is a description on the edge of the label in small print

 

I tend to agree with this. I have had three different saisons from Stillwater - Stateside, Cellar Door and Existent -all were good (Stateside being the best IMO) none were great. In Whole Foods Cellar Door was tagged 12.99 but when I got to the register it rang up for 23.99! The manager gave it to me for the lower price because it was mislabeled but it was indeed 23.99. Im not usually one to bitch about price, Ill just pass something up if I dont feel its worth the cost, but Dupont is $11 and Fantome is $17 around these parts and none of the three Stillwater offerings were in eithers league.